Detection of failures in combinational digital circuits

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the problem of determining, by terminal experiments, whether a given combinational switching circuit operates correctly or whether it is impaired by some malfunction. We shall be primarily concerned with permanent faults due to component failures. It is assumed that other procedures will be employed to protect the circuit against the effects of transient faults. A method is presented for the detection of failures in combinational switching circuits. The method provides minimal sets of tests for 2-level circuits and nearly minimal sets of tests for multilevel circuits.